


A Good Neighbor for Goodneighbor

by Ihsan997



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Acceptance, Alternate Universe - Fallout (Video Games) Setting, Animal Death, Battle, Canon-Typical Violence, Explosions, Family Loss, Gen, Ghouls, Goodneighbor (Fallout), Grenades, Gun Violence, Heroism, Home, Human, Marauders, Massachusetts, Memory Loss, Minor Character Death, Moving On, Mutant Powers, Mutants, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Apocalypse, Rocket Launchers, Travel, Villain Character Death, Villains to Heroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-22 15:56:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22085098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ihsan997/pseuds/Ihsan997
Summary: A super mutant nicknamed “Frankenstein” loses his entire roving warband to a rival band of human raiders, so he sets out to return the favor. His life is given meaning again by the friends he makes along the way.This takes place in the Commonwealth during the timeframe of Fallout 4.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Fallout and the mentioned canon characters are the property of Bethesda.

The irreverent teenager crept passed his lazy brother’s room, taking extra care not to cause noise due to the younger sibling’s habit of sleeping with the door open. He didn’t want to hear any complaining now that he had the holoplayer all to himself, and so he spent a whole minute or two just sneaking by the open door. Once he reached the end of the spotless hallway, he entered the freshly cleaned study of their underground domicile.

Franklin Steiner rarely had much time alone to himself in Vault 81. The social life was so vibrant, and the community so tight-knit, that the teen had to savor those moments he could find alone. On that particular night, his only companion would be the pre-war dubbed English version of a Japanese cartoon about a giant robot. The vault’s archive only had a single, non-transferable copy, and he’d waited for over a week for this opportunity.

Sitting down on the shiny, velvety couch, the jumpsuit-clad teen pushed the play button and was greeted to the campy 1950s theme song of the show’s American version. “Greetings, young people of Earth!” boomed the voice of the giant robot named Infinity Prime. “What is the primary main objective?”

He made sure to repeat the line out loud with the adult actors portraying teenagers on the holotape. “To destroy all villains!” he read aloud in unison with the characters.

Just then, the voice of his mother carried over from the domicile’s main room. “Guys, dessert is ready!” she called, likely waking up his brother in the process.

Wanting dessert just as much as he wanted to listen to the episode, he hit the pause button and stood up on the well-swept floor. “Be there in a minute, mom!”

—————

One century later…

The irreverent super mutant ambled past his lazy comrade’s room, taking extra care not to cause noise due to the radio station not having any doors. He didn’t want to hear any complaining now that he had the magic human device all to himself, and so he spent a minute or two just sneaking by the crumbling door frame. Once he reached the end of the dirty hallway, he entered the trashed record room of their new hideout just outside the Commonwealth.

Frankenstein rarely had much time alone to himself in his mutant warband. Their social life was too repetitive, and his brothers never bored with the same activities over and over, that the mutant night watchman had to savor those moments he could find alone. On that particular night, his only companion would be the ancient relic which their human captives used to cast magic spells on talking boxes. His brothers had eaten the captives and trashed most of the equipment, and he’d waited over a week for this opportunity.

Sitting down on the filthy, torn couch, the mutant wearing two microwave ovens for shoes pushed the magic button and was greeted to strange music from the box which he somehow already knew. “Greetings, young people of Earth!” boomed the voice of a robot transmitting a secret message. “What is the primary main objective?”

Unintentionally and without even considering it, he yelled words which he hadn’t planned on saying, yet it felt so natural: “To destroy all villains!” he recited aloud, jumping when a chorus of human voices in the magic box said the same words at the same time.

Just then, he flinched for reasons he didn’t understand, turning toward the open doorway of the musty record room. “What dessert?” he yelled, causing his fellow night watchers in the next room over to groan and grumble.

Hitting the pause button and standing up on the debris-covered floor, he clutched his temples in reaction to a sudden migraine. “Oh, mom, what was for dinner?” he growled, confused by the human woman’s voice in his head.

One of the other watchmen rolled over in the next room. “Frankenstein, shut up! Me want sleep!” the less intelligent mutant yelled.

Stumbling down the hallway and outside of the commandeered radio station, he struggled to cope with the sudden onset of memories he’d long since forgotten. “Too many head pictures!” he yelled in reaction to the garbled mash of past experiences. “Mom, what’s for dessert!”


	2. Chapter 2

Frankenstein’s dreams had been dominated by memories of Vault 81 ever since he’d started watching the holotapes. He’d become obsessed to the point that their warband’s overlord thought he was going too crazy and put him on meat bagging duty. Frankenstein didn’t mind…that meant there was more time to listen to the holotape shows.

On one particular night, he dreamt of a young man, brash and prideful, leaving an underground vault to travel the world. The images were jumbled, however, and combined with multiple different experiences mashed into one by the malleable nature of dreams. The young man left the vault against the pleas of his elders, ran from a pack of giant insects, and was captured by men in white suits. After that, his dream was only full of green water, bubbles, and glass tubes. And explosions.

Gunfire and rocket blasts woke him up, leaving him groaning on the couch as he wondered if he were still dreaming or not. He was a heavy sleeper, and even drill practice and sparring matches by his mutant brothers rarely woke him. Thus, he was entirely unprepared when one of the walls and part of the roof was blown off right in front of him.

“Die puny humans!” came the battle cry of the warband’s master, though more shouts were cut off by the firing of multiple assault carbines.

Frankenstein rolled off the couch and leapt to his feet, his vision illuminated only by the light of the guns firing and grenades exploding. He had no idea what time it was, but like his brothers, any time was a good time for a fight. He exited the doorless frame of the sleeping room only to find that the entire hallway and the other half of the building were gone. In their stead was only flaming rubble and dead bodies, mostly of his warband’s mutant attack dogs.

“Where are the guns?” he yelled upon realizing that he’d unloaded all weapons he’d been carrying at the communal rack before sleeping. The super mutants didn’t own individual property, and he’d felt he didn’t need a gun since he would sleep.

A few of his brothers ran past him from behind, rushing over a hill topped with flaming trees. One of them tossed a pipe rifle back to him before disappearing into a pillar of smoke and flames, and he followed after them until he heard the sound of another grenade. Even when groggy and half asleep, he knew to strafe around the smoke cloud, crouching and creeping to see who was on the other side. The flash of another blast illuminated the silhouettes of many human bodies - far more bodies than there were members of his small warband. Regardless, Frankenstein opened fire, hearing the cries of a few humans before he ducked for cover behind a garbage dumpster in what used to be the radio station’s parking lot.

Whoever was on the other side knew he was there, and the return fire was heavy and swift. The sounds of mutant and normal dogs fighting reached his ears, and the familiar sound of his brothers’ large caliber pipe rifles assured him that he wasn’t alone.

The ensuing firefight lasted for over two hours. Back and forth, the mutants and humans exchanged fire, hiding behind hard cover and mostly missing their shots in the dark. The long pauses and lulls in active fighting tested the patience of the mutants, and one by one, Frankenstein heard the sound of his brothers’ bodies dropping. His anger grew not only at the humans, but also at his fellow mutants; he’d been listening to so many holotapes of pre-war action shows that he’d learned a word he’d once known: ‘attrition.’ It meant waiting out the opponent and trading shots strategically. A few years ago, he would have mocked such thinking as weak and humanlike; in his budding awareness of the world, though, he now realized that the human’s patience and strategy were the reasons why, by the end of the second hour of fighting, he could only hear the sounds of two other mutants, they were all out of bullets, and their enemies began loading an unseen heavy weapon which required time to set up.

Seeing that he had only a few bullets left, Frankenstein struggled to make a decision. If he charged the humans and made a last stand, the remaining mutants might not be smart enough to flee; they’d just take his charge as a signal to do the same, and they’d all get killed. If he ran way and left the two to die, he’d be no better than a cowardly human. He froze behind the garbage dumpster, unsure of what to do.

The humans, however, made the decision for him. Before he could even react, one of them finished setting up the heavy weapon which required two of them to operate. The last things Frankenstein remembered from that night were the sound of a missile launching, the garbage dumpster exploding, and his body flying over the hills and into a polluted lake.


	3. Chapter 3

The warmth of the morning sun eventually woke Frankenstein up, along with the latent pain of being flung a hundred yards through the air. Vision blurry, he rolled over and felt the mud and plastic items of a riverbank beneath him. Even with the aggressive impulse of his mutated brain, he couldn’t leap to his feet and search for danger just yet, and he fought a minor battle just to push himself up into a sitting position.

The bright rays of light made him feel a bit better, and he shook his head while scanning the area for things which needed to be smashed. There was a pile of Mirelurk dung across the stream, but he was otherwise alone and unscathed on the outside. He’d taken quite the fall, and unlike his brothers, he didn’t rush to get up right away. Slowly, he rose and grabbed the nearest rock he could lift out of the stream, ever wary of threats. Having landed in an area vaguely familiar to him, he wandered back in the direction of the radio station which had been his warband’s temporary home.

Down the polluted stream, past a stagnant lake and into the irradiated wilderness, Frankenstein shambled, the movement helping him to walk off the ache of being blasted through the air and knocked unconscious for half the night. More droppings of dung led him to a live mirelurk, a vibrant specimen traveling overland among the leafless trees, likely in search of a new body of water. Frankenstein went to one of the twisted trees of the brittle forest and tore off a large branch, attracting the crustacean’s attention by thumping it on the ground. The overgrown crab charged, skittering quickly on its many limbs until the two of them were close enough for the mutant to sniff the mirelurk’s stench. Hurling the big rock forward, he struck a heavy blow at the creature’s legs - a tactic he only learned from listening to holotapes of campy adventure dramas. The exoskeleton in the creature’s legs cracked, crippling the mirelurk enough such that Frankenstein was able to beat its head in with the branch. After a few minutes of smashing, he’d ripped the crusty pincers off of the creature and had a portable, if raw, snack.

The site of the now-destroyed radio station wasn’t far, but he’d taken a confused and circuitous route. Once he’d located it, he hid himself in the hills about a mile away and waited. There were scraggy, thorny bushes about the rocky hills, and he was able to observe the bombed out location which had, for a few years, been his home. Bodies were still strewn about; much like the super mutants themselves, the human raiders didn’t care to pile corpses or sweep away debris. Vultures bickered with the attack dogs over the right to feed on Frankenstein’s fallen brothers, and more than once in between bites of his mirelurk meat, he had to fight the urge to pull a kamikaze run in vengeful fury. The scene was one which his violent, primitive brain had to respect: the raiders had launched an incredible attack backed up with explosives, leaving craters and shrapnel all over the former radio station. Even the chainlink fence had been knocked down, much less the building he and his brothers had lived in. The raiders and their dogs didn’t stop patrolling though, maintaining a strict regimen like his brothers had, and he found no opportunity to sneak back into the open-air wreckage; all he could do was hide in the gnarled bushes and count how many times the fifteen someodd raiders changed picket shifts.

Hours passed, and soon enough, dusk fell and Frankenstein had eaten all of his mirelurk meat. At nightfall, he disengaged and slept beneath a tree further into the hills, further away than he knew humans to patrol in the dark. His sleep was interrupted only twice, once by mongrels howling a few miles away and once by the sound of an unseen bloatfly. In the morning, he awoke to find that nearby bloatfly laying eggs, all of which he ate for breakfast. The sound of non-mutated dogs barking drew his attention, and when he returned to his hiding spot closer to the destroyed station, he watched as the raiders abandoned the location in a hurry. Their war cries, which included the banging of rusted pots and pans, reminded him of the monkeys on one of the holotapes documentaries he’d listened to, but the fading sound also alerted him that, within half an hour, he was safe to return home.

Frankenstein returned to smoldering rubble, some of which was still on fire. Blood boiling with rage, he felt powerless to help his brothers as he counted their remains. All of them had been killed by humans - a species which they’d considered weak and incapable. The sight of so many dead mutants and so few dead raiders was the ultimate insult, like a testament to their failure. Even when he’d cooked and eaten as much meat as he could pull from the raider’s bones before his hunger was satisfied, his pride was most assuredly dissatisfied. There was nowhere left for him to live, and nobody for him to live with. His warband had never numbered more than ten, and without access to the preserved vats of FEV, there was no way for them - or him - to increase their numbers. Frankenstein was the sole survivor, and merely being the strongest of a warband too weak to defeat a small clan of raiders wasn’t likely to gain him entry to other super mutant bases. Not on its own. He’d have to prove himself.

He wandered over to the corpse of his former overlord, a mutant they’d all respected as the meanest…but shot in the back of the head in the midst of donning armor. The raiders had won because they’d caught the warband by surprise. They weren’t stronger, but they were smarter.

“Smarter…” Frankenstein murmured to himself.

Sweeping his eyes over the destruction, he took note of details his fellow mutants wouldn’t have cared about. The handful of dead humans were all fully armed and had died near hard cover. The dead mutants had all died out in the open, clutching the most convenient weapons to load on short notice while the better weapons sat unused on their racks (at least, the good weapons which the humans hadn’t looted). The victors were the ones who’d planned better.

“I’ll get smarter,” he murmured again.

With little else to live for than vengeance, Frankenstein took the high-level armor of his former overlord, along with the associated sledgehammer and minigun, and stood atop the barren hills. Even though they’d left almost an hour ago, the raiders kicked up a good amount of dust in their wake, leaving a trail to rise up in the morning sky. He wasted no time before following it.


	4. Chapter 4

After half a day of stalking the raiders through the barren wastes, Frankenstein was sure of one thing: they weren’t as smart as he’d thought they were.

For hours in the hilly badlands, he hung back perhaps a mile or so out of view, following them not only by the dust they kicked up in the air but also the constant noise they made. That noise, more than anything, caused him to question what he’d previously known about humans. Super mutants yelled at their enemies when they were engaging in battle; when they weren’t in battle, they grew bored and sought new enemies to fight. This group of humans who’d destroyed his home, these raiders, never shut up: even though there weren’t any enemies in view, they continued banging those rusty pots and pans together and even occasionally firing their weapons into the air. Frankenstein knew that mutants like him weren’t the smartest beings in the wasteland, but his first extended experience with the raiders gave him the impression that they weren’t as smart as his overlord always claimed humans were.

His experience…when quietly stalking the raiders for hours on end, Frankenstein had plenty of time to think. In fact, he only had time to think. Following the raiders wasn’t difficult considering the ruckus they caused, and the mutant’s primitive yet progressing brain replayed head stories about his lost holotapes, the humans they’d captured at the radio station, and the dreams about a young man from Vault 81 which wouldn’t leave him alone. His adventure holotapes, especially reruns of the Mechanist and the Silver Shroud, often mentioned combat and tactics which his mutant brothers couldn’t grasp - at least, none of his brothers other than their overlord. Everything he knew of humans was that they were smarter than mutants; those raiders, however, didn’t seem too smart. His warband had been destroyed by an enemy who was not only weaker than them, but also dumber than normal humans. The sting of that humiliation made Frankenstein angrier than he ever remembered feeling.

His anger had to remain under control, however, because the raiders stopped their slow, boisterous march around midday and quickened their pace. No longer able to track them by listening, Frankenstein began to move faster as well, hastening to keep their dust trail in view. The raiders had obviously found something, and he began to worry that he’d lose track of his targets. Eventually their dust trail disappeared from his view of the horizon entirely, leaving him to hurry over the furthest treeless hill he could spot a few miles in their direction so he could cling to a sliver of hope for revenge.

Gunshots, dogs barking, and brahmin braying caught his attention, and he realized that he was about a mile off course in…some direction. He didn’t know where he was anymore, but he followed the commotion in a new direction. Over the hills and through the woods, Frankenstein hurried, pausing by a patch of thorny bushes both to rest after the long journey and to take in the confounding scene playing out on the plains ahead.

Among the rocky outcroppings, two groups of humans had formed. The raiders he sought, in all their cacophonous glory, bunched up behind a few boulders and a rusting car frame, taking aim from cover as they’d done when they’d killed all his mutant brothers. The familiarity of the scene caused him to grind his molar teeth, and a few years ago, he would have started taking shots at them immediately without forethought. Too many war dramas he’d listened to while on night watch at the radio station had cautioned against a thing which humans called ‘headlong,’ a mistake which meant fighting without planning and probably growing an extra long head. Instead of rushing the raiders immediately, he continued to hide by the bushes and rest while he observed.

What he saw on the other side of the plain confused and confounded him no matter how much holotapes dramas had prepared him. Another group of humans hid against a hill, these ones more numerous and including children and old people - a sure sign of weakness in a mutant’s eyes. A half-circle of rickety wagons and the cutoff back ends of pickup trucks protected them and their brahmins, along with bags and crates of…human stuff. Those people were dressed like typical weak humans, wearing clothes without any spikes or metal and wielding simple pipe guns and hunting rifles. They weren’t dressed for war…they were dressed for transporting junk and things and stuff. They were merchants.

Frankenstein knew from the radio station that humans fought with other humans, but he’d never actually seen such a thing occur. The notion confused him: at no point in his hundred years or so had he ever fought another mutant, not unless they were practicing. Even stranger mutants his overlord had found were brought into their camps as new members without an introduction. To see beings who looked the same on the outside fighting each other confused him into inaction for a good few minutes.

The sounds of the dogs barking - those damned non-mutated dogs - snapped him out of his stupor. The raiders and merchants had been taking pot shots at each other from half a mile away, none of them succeeding due to the distance between them. In an act which Frankenstein identified as a strategy, the raiders released their attack dogs first, then sent forward a few of their own to begin firing at the scared merchants.

With a portion of the raiders distracted by other humans, the main body of them were vulnerable; there would be no better moment to strike. Without even letting loose a battle cry, Frankenstein took one of the fragmentation grenades he’d scavenged from his fallen brothers and pulled the pin.


	5. Chapter 5

Frankenstein reached back and heaved, throwing the grenade in a perfect arc as it soared through the air and landed only a few yards away from the main body of raiders hiding behind the boulders. Though his aim had been off, they hadn’t noticed the projectile until the fuse ran out. He began running toward the raiders before it even exploded, surprising and confusing them just in time for the grenade to blow. The blast wasn’t direct enough to kill any of them outright, but half a dozen bodies went flying through the air while an equal number simply hit the ground. The contingent of raiders and dogs who’d been charging the merchants stopped midway between the two groups of humans, leading to one of the dogs taking a bullet in the buttocks from a merchant’s cheap gun. Just as Frankenstein had been confused by the sight of humans fighting humans, the raiders were confused by the sight of a super mutant attacking them in the middle of nowhere.

The response was swift. Like mutants, the raiders were ready for a fight, and their attention shifted from the merchants to Frankenstein even if they didn’t understand where he’d come from or how he’d found them. Those behind the boulder scrambled to reposition themselves, hiding on the other side and adjusting their aim. As he approached, he was able to see that their small band was more heavily armed than he remembered seeing their kind, with weaponry his brothers would have envied. His minigun took only a moment to warm up once he began squeezing the trigger, and the barrels poured out enough suppression fire to prevent the raiders from shooting back at him. Dogs barked and more raiders yelled, though their cries were drowned out both by the deluge of 5mm rounds as well as the merchants popping their cheap, puny rounds at the raider’s flanks.

More than once, Frankenstein considered taking aim at the merchants too before deciding that, for his brothers to be properly avenged, he needed to ensure that all the raiders were dead first. Prioritizing targets was another mental skill he’d only grasped recently, and he began yelling back at the raiders as he felt his own smartness smashing his enemies. With the raiders pinned and unable to properly respond, he set his minigun on the ground and pulled the pin on another grenade.

“Burst, bloodsacks!” he yelled while throwing it behind the boulder, sending raiders running in all directions. The grenade exploded a moment later, sending a few of them to the ground with injuries.

Barking reached his ears just in time for him to spot an attack dog lunging at him. Rather than turning his attention to decimating the dog alone, he reacted with his smartness. When the dog leapt, he caught it in midair, forcefed it a grenade, and threw its body at a few of the remaining raiders. The explosion didn’t actually hurt them, but it did prevent them from aiming properly, and their bullets flew in random directions across the plains. The merchants continued firing while Frankenstein scanned the area for new targets, but he wasn’t quite prepared when the events of the previous night replayed themselves.

The familiar sound of a missile launching alerted him to brace himself, and he was slightly more prepared this time when the explosion knocked him high into the air along with a dog and a raider. Disoriented and imbalanced, he folded his arms over his head for protection just before he hit the dirt with such force that the raider, who’d flown a similar distance, died outright. Pushing himself up to his feet, Frankenstein wavered and nearly fell again as he looked for his assailant, noticing just how many of the raiders had been killed by the merchants during his distracting attack. His minigun and sledgehammer were on the plains in front of him, too far away for him to reach them before his assailant reloaded the missile launcher. And what an assailant it was.

Across the plain, no more than fifty feet away from him, stood a human who looked like a robot. Donning a scavenged mish-mash of poorly coordinated power armor, the raider leader matched the super mutant in size and stature, furiously reloading the missile launcher which had put Frankenstein out of the fight last night. With the surviving raiders either fleeing or squabbling with the merchants, he had no more decoys to assist with his revenge and nothing else to shoot the raider leader with.

Running out of ideas, he did the only thing he could do within a reasonable amount of time: lobbing more grenades. One after the other, he threw a handful of grenades all around the raider veteran. The shrapnel didn’t pierce the raider’s power armor, but the human was staggered so much that the missile launcher fumbled and tumbled ineffectively. Knowing that he’d die without vengeance if he waited, Frankenstein finally charged, running toward the raider leader until he was too close for a missile to be launched safely. The grimy human, recognizing that fact, dropped the missile launcher and unclipped a lead pipe from the power armor’s belt at the same time that Frankenstein picked up his sledgehammer.

“Like the sight of your own blood?” the raider leader hissed while thrusting the lead pipe like a spear.

Rather than swinging back, Frankenstein parried the pipe and thrust his sledge in the same manner. The heavy weight at the end of the shaft proved nearly weightless for his mutated muscles, and he engaged in a long, drawn-out fencing match with the raider, strangely uninterrupted by the cautious merchants. The armor-clad raider tried to provoke Frankenstein more than once, poking the lead pipe at the mutant’s face, hands, and - nonsensically given a mutant’s lack of private parts - groin area. The raider recoiled, however, when the mutant poked right back with the broad head of the sledgehammer. At one point, Frankenstein even manage to hook the lead pipe with the hammer’s head and tried to pull it away, surprising the raider with the level of tactics displayed by a super mutant.

In a move of either desperation or impatience, the raider grabbed the lead pipe with both hands and let Frankenstein pull him close, shoulder-checking the mutant like a hockey player. Shocked by the strength of the otherwise puny human when wearing power armor, even poorly maintained power armor, Frankenstein backpedaled and caused the raider’s confidence to swell. Perhaps elated at the feeling of machismo from the ability to push around a super mutant, the raider pressed forward more rapidly, wielding the lead pipe in both hands and swinging for Frankenstein’s arms.

The wide swings were the big mistake of the fight. When the raider reared back for the fifteenth time, Frankenstein thrusted forward with the sledgehammer again, scoring a fast but stiff blow to the raider leader’s elbow. Although the suit of power armor wasn’t dented, the blunt force trauma transferred through to the flesh inside, and the raider’s right arm immediately dropped. Finding purchase with the tactic of attrition after a fight which had already taken far longer than either of them expected, the mutant began striking the raider’s shoulders and head by thrusting the sledgehammer like a billiard cue. The previous forward push was reversed, with the raider giving up ground under the short, quick strikes until one connected directly with the front of the power armor helmet. The glass of the eyepieces shattered, signifying a blow rough enough to rattle the head contained inside. Finally pulling back like he’d wanted to all along, Frankenstein swung the sledgehammer like a baseball swatter and struck the armor covering the raider’s stomach.

“Garghh!” the raider choked as the shock of the hammer traveled right through the reinforced metal armor to split the human’s rib cage like a wedge.

Doubling over, the raider clung to the lead pipe as if the weapon was of any use, leaving himself completely prone. Almost satisfied just by the sound of the human choking, Frankenstein grabbed the raider by the arm and ran before shoving hard, causing the human to skid sideways a few yards before tumbling to the ground. Displaying none of the honor which the humans in Frankenstein’s holotapes had spoken of, the raider leader actually tried to crawl away, seeking an impossible escape instead of facing the end bravely. Finally letting his aggression take over, the mutant raised the sledgehammer up high and brought the blunt instrument down, slamming it so hard on the back of the power armor helmet that the head piece actually became stuck in place due to the rim bending into that of the chest piece. The raider leader didn’t move again, nor did most of the clan whose bodies were strewn about alongside the dogs.

Whoever claimed that revenge left one feeling empty inside must have been inexperienced in the art; Frankenstein could attest to that. The killers of his brothers dead around him, he dropped his sledgehammer to the ground and arched his back, staring up into the overcast midday sky. If his brothers couldn’t be brought back, then at least he’d killed their killers - and that was enough to make him happy.

Until then, he’d paid the merchants little mind. Their weapons were inferior, their ranks were feeble, and they obviously weren’t a threat to him. Whether they opened fired or ran away made little difference in terms of what he’d personally choose to do next, and so he ignored them while he savored the euphoria of triumph. Slowly, however, the sound of skin slapping on skin caught his attention, and he tilted his head down to see what the merchants were up to.

One by one, the non-warlike variant of humans started to clap their hands together, hiding behind the safety of their chopped-up vehicles but making a spectacle of their silly behavior anyway. The hand slaps were called clapping - even if Frankenstein had never seen it done, he knew the sound. These humans, a species which his own considered their mortal enemies, were giving a standing ovation to a super mutant who’d killed other humans. All he could do was stare and ponder, his sudden smartness temporarily robbed from him.


	6. Chapter 6

Slack jawed, Frankenstein could only gawk as the crowd of humans hiding behind their wagons and half-cars gave him a standing ovation. He couldn’t remember being so close to humans unless he was either fighting them or cooking them, yet the admiration in their eyes appeared so sincere that he didn’t even second-guess his judgment in continuing to standing in confusion. For a fleeting moment, he suspected that the humans were trying to lull him into a false sense of security to strike, but when a few of them stepped out of their half-circle of wagons - unarmed - he realized that they were neither as cunning nor as intelligent as he’d expected.

One of the humans, one of the elderly ones who couldn’t even walk at a normal pace, stepped the closest to him. Her head was small enough for him to crush it in the palm of his hand, yet she moved right up in striking distance to get a good look at him. “I’ve seen a lot of things out here in the wasteland; I’ve seen thieves with hearts, small town folks without them, and everything in between,” the wrinkly, prune-like human babbled up to him. “But this is the first time I’ve seen a super mutant save a caravan of working people from raiders.”

All of the other humans continued looking up at Frankenstein as if they wanted something from him. The only things he ever knew humans to want from him were his life or his warband’s land, and these merchants obviously didn’t want any of that. The only other thing he knew from experience and holotapes is that humans always wanted to talk, so he assumed that these ones wanted his talk. Were his brothers still alive; he’d never have given a bunch of humans what they wanted; without anyone he actually respected to observe him, however, he responded in kind…as he was realizing quickly, with his revenge complete, he had nothing else left to fill his time in the world.

“I killed the one who killed my brothers,” he said, and no sooner had he spoke than had an awestruck gasp arisen from the crowd.

One of the healthier adult humans, at least healthy by the standards of an inherently fragile species, stepped out from behind the wagons as well. “My brother was killed by raiders, too!” the complete stranger said in dim-witted, almost naïve shock.

As much as Frankenstein was aware that humans were prone to infighting, to hear such a confession so casually felt surreal, even more so than his dreams of Vault 81. “These humans…wanted to kill your humans,” he asked, though his voice accidentally dropped in tone pitch at the end of the question, and the merchants mistook it for a statement of fact.

“Yes, they’re terrible people,” the human grandmother standing right in front of him chuckled, void of the frantic fear he knew humans to bear even in the aftermath of a battle. “They never leave honest, working people alone; they’d prefer to steal from others and tear down what’s been built up.”

He didn’t like what the old human was saying because it reminded him of what he’d lost. He frowned deeply. “These raiders blew up my house,” he said bitterly, though the humans mistook his dislike of the topic they’d brought up for commiserating over their shared suffering.

“My house was blown up by raiders, too!” said another one of the healthier looking humans, a young woman hiding behind a brahmin.

“My house was blown up by gunners,” said another woman, though Frankenstein couldn’t see where she was standing.

Chuckling to herself in a manner far more comfortable with loss than what he’d expected from such delicate creatures, the old lady waved her hand in the air even though there weren’t any flies buzzing around. “The wasteland makes for strange allies; we all do what we must to get by.” Her eyes drifted from Frankenstein to his minigun, still on the dusty plain a little further away. The way her eyes lit up made him feel like her apparent naïveté was temporarily leaving her. “Seeing as how you have no more family, why don’t you come along with us? We could use a bit of protection, as you saw; it’s a long road to the town we’re shipping to. We have food to go around, and our destination is more…open-minded than most; you could probably complete the journey.”

Taken aback by the request, he recoiled and felt a measure of shame for even entertaining the thought of lending his strength to creatures so weak. “You’re humans; I’m a mutant,” he said right away, unable to easily accept the suggestion.

The old human shrugged nonchalantly. “Those raiders were humans, too, but they were bad humans. Every type of people has their goodies and baddies. You were kind enough to draw the attention of those miscreants away from us, so you must be one of the good mutants. Isn’t that right?”

All eyes were on the super mutant as he considered his limited options. If he refused, then he’d have to figure out what to do with his life next. He didn’t know where the nearest super mutant camp was, and he didn’t have food or the type of rifle he’d need to catch more. Now that his revenge was complete, he wasn’t actually sure of what to do with himself.

His stomach growled. That was enough for him to decide…for the time being.

“Will work for food,” he sighed, his hunger slightly lessening his embarrassment at dealing so politely with humans.


	7. Chapter 7

After a week of smashing feral ghouls and wild mongrels across the treeless plains and hills, Frankenstein had escorted the merchant caravan across the Commonwealth and into the ruins of what was once known as Boston. More than once, the urge to betray the merchants and kill them for their food, as he’d done with many humans prior, crept into his mind. He’d even entertained the thought seriously a few times. In the end, however, their naively civil treatment of him won his loyalty, and he kept them safe and slept in their camp for the entirety of their journey.

Deep into the crowded yet crumbling ruins of Boston, where the garbage-filled streets narrowed and even the uninhabited buildings were boarded up, the merchants managed to corral their brahmins and wagons into a fortified parking garage next to a walled burrough called Goodneighhbor. Frankenstein flexed his fists every time he heard a sudden noise in the vicinity of a human habitat, the vestige of his fight response (like most super mutants, he lacked a flight response). He was quite proud of himself for not reacting violently to all the movement and noise from humans by the time the merchants had set up camp in the secure garage and entered the crowded fence city.

With his responsibility to the merchants finished, he approached the old woman to whom the other humans seemed to listen. She’d been sitting on a cinderblock and giving out instructions to the other humans about what they needed to do in order to sell their wares, so Frankenstein assumed that he’d need to talk to her in order to find out, at a minimum, where he could find the nearest super mutant base. Considering the fact that his fellow super mutants would probably kill all the merchants were they able, he felt conflicted over the question; he’d found, after a week of traveling with them, that he preferred not to kill those specific humans.

A few of the merchants looked on him in fear now that his duty was complete, but the old lady still smiled in a way which made him wonder how an individual who’d seen more of the wasteland than the others could be so bizarrely happy about her pitifully short life. “You’re a handy person to have around, Frank!” she said, using the nickname which he didn’t like but tolerated because she cooked the best meat in the caravan. “Your help made this trip possible.”

Receiving a compliment from a human felt nice and wrong at the same time, and he couldn’t allow himself to smile. “You cook good meat,” he replied plainly, unable to blow her off since he was still surrounded by humans and, from that she’d told him, ghouls.

The merchants who’d been gathered around the old lady began gathering bags of merchandise from the brahmins which were being tended to in the garage, leaving their elder alone with the mutant. She stood up from her cinderblock and waved for him to follow her. The quality of her cooking was the only memory which prevented him from staying angry at her for ordering him to follow, and he walked with her toward a gate in Goodneighbor’s walls made from a chain link fence wrapped in barbed wire.

“Cooking doesn’t seem like enough considering what you did for us; perhaps it was enough for staying with us all that time, but not getting ride of those raiders,” she started by saying as they were approached by two armed humans in three-pice suits on the other side of the gate. “If your family really was killed, then you need a new one. That’s why I sent my son ahead of us to speak to the Neighborhood Watch.”

As much as his mind had advanced, Frankenstein couldn’t comprehend the relevance of what the old lady was saying. “Can the neighbor watchers find a super mutant base?” he asked, perplexed.

She did that thing where she waved her hand at nothing. “Not without being shot, they can’t. But we can arrange something better; something special. A place in life where you’ll be unique.” She turned to the humans and ghouls wearing fedoras at the gate. “He’s with us, boys. The one my son mentioned.”

The watchmen pulled the makeshift barbed gate open to let them through. All four of them stared at Frankenstein in awe, but none of them made the type of comments which would have tested his patience against smashing them; they just let him enter a predominantly human city.

“See, Goodneighbor is a little different from other places. The mayor’s a ghoul, as are many residents, and there are a few robots without masters. You’ll be the first super mutant, but I think you’ll find that the people here wouldn’t mind having a mean son of a bitch like you who can keep antagonistic people out.”

Just beyond the gate, in a serpentine line of aluminum fences so high that even he couldn’t see over it, he stopped walking. “But I’m a super mutant. Mutants fight with humans and ghouls.”

“You were pretty nice to us,” the old lady said, undaunted. “And here, you’ll have everything you need: food, shelter, and people who need you. They won’t care what you look like or where you came from; they’ll just care about Frank, the mutant who everybody likes to have around.”

The two of them stood and stared at each other for a few moments. She wasn’t intimidated in the least despite being a quarter his size, and her calmness around him defeated his attempts to convince himself that all humans were his enemies. Due both to the power of her persuasion as well as the fact that he had nowhere else to go, he relented in the end.

“I will stay here…for a while,” he sighed. “At least to sleep a long sleep.”

Pushing him more than he preferred in reaction to his acceptance, the old lady reached upwards and grabbed his big green hand. “A choice that benefits everyone involved!” she said cheerily while pulling him into the city. “Let’s take you to meet the mayor. My caravan and I will be leaving, but I know for a fact that you’ll have no shortage of work if you still like pointing that minigun at raiders.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s how my super mutant OC moved in to Goodneighbor.
> 
> Frank is an RP character I use on Discord, user Ihsan997#7712; there are a few good channels for Fallout there. More stories will be posted as ideas come to me and as I find more people to collaborate with; this story was written without help since it was just a backstory.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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